Mandala of Hearing 1 (Electronics), ink, gouache and graphite on paper, 12″ x 12″, 2013
When my hearing loss first appeared, it was just a mild loss in only my left ear. The audiologist fitted me with a tiny red transparent in-the-canal hearing aid that looked like a piece of jewelry and which I was not very good about wearing. But then a couple of years later I had an incident of worsening and now my right ear was involved and I needed aids in both ears. The loss had become significant enough that the hearing aids were really necessary and I wore them religiously. Over time, as my hearing continued to worsen, I received aids that were progressively bigger and bigger to house stronger electronics. Eventually I grew so deaf that hearing aids didn’t provide me with any benefit and I received cochlear implants, the first one in 2006 and the second in 2009. My hearing electronics became such a central part of my existence that I wanted to memorialize them in the form of mandalas. I was thinking here of mandalas as a focus for meditation, which seemed appropriate given the many, many hours I have spent meditating upon and caring for these devices. The drawing above is one of a series of these works that I created. In 2019, Cochlear Americas, which is the company that manufactures my cochlear implants, put out a call for art to decorate their headquarters campus in Lone Tree, Colorado. I submitted a number of pieces, including the mandalas, and was so pleased when they were accepted. It feels right that the art that is completely about hearing electronics and my experience of them should end up residing with the company that exists to create them. Cochlear created this beautiful website which shows all of the artwork that was accepted:
Morrow Art Productions 